A friend at work just got back last week and had the same complaint. This was his first ever trip to Disney, to boot. He and his family got in line for Mission Space with a posted 10 minute wait and got off the ride 50 minutes later. His complaint was that they were letting all the FP+ people bypass them continuously. He also had the same situation at Dinosaur. They waited 30 minutes longer than the posted wait.
One would think that with this new Earth-Shattering technology that they could accurately track and post a realistic wait time. Those bands are "magic", correct?
He thought FP+ was OK. He liked the fact that he could open his door, and that sometimes it worked when they would pay for meals with it (although he called Disney QS some of the worst food he has ever eaten). I then pulled my wallet out and showed him the FP-s that are in my sig pic. Even he agreed that 3 < 6 and he would have liked a lot more. But he is an Engineer, so take that for what it's worth.
In my opinion, the Cast Member at Merge isn't doing that great of a job. We do have ratios that we have to follow (Phase 1 at 1:4, Phase 2 at 1:4+10, Phase 3 at 1:4 add a zero.) However, that doesn't mean we can't use our judgement. My current attraction is one that is now always a Phase 3. It has gotten so bad that we now, almost always (depends on if we are understaffed or not) have two Cast Members at Merge and 2-3 over at FP Return. Merge 1 does the ratios, Merge 2 tells everyone "Mickey to Mickey." I always ask the next party in standby how many are in their party. When a group of guests takes a while figuring out how to scan their MagicBands, I squeeze the standby party in without starting over from the ratios. Lately, I've just been taking 100 FastPass and 35 standby and ignoring the ratios. I've told my coordinators that I don't care, I want the lines to move and everyone to be happy. At Merge, we have had plenty of guests screaming at our Cast, even throwing food items at some. Sometimes there is chanting and profanity is flying from both the guests and coordinators. At an attraction where I am crosstrained and keep my proficiencies, one of our College Program Cast Members was punched in the stomach.
I'm not sure how Adventureland has their staffing in the morning. I have never headed to that side of the park early in the morning. I know that at one of my older complexes, staffing would pick up half an hour to an hour after the park opens. Back on topic, any Cast Member who wants to be as efficient as they could would merge into both sides. Sending a whole side of empty boats is ridiculous and if they are staffed properly, I'm surprised Adventureland's leadership team hasn't looked into it.
As for the wait times, they can change whenever rotation goes through Merge. We don't monitor wait times with MagicBands, yet. That will be coming very soon. We are still using the red FLIK cards. If you see a posted wait time of 30 minutes, it means that 30 minutes ago it took someone 30 minutes to go through. We are supposed to send six FLIK cards through each hour. Unfortunately, more than half of the time, the FLIK card doesn't beep twice when we scan it prior to loading. When I'm at Greeter, I always send through one every two minutes or so. This way, it usually should be accurate. If we send 25 through while there, a leader gets alerted and we can get a point on our record card. While we do use MagicBands to monitor the FP wait times, we still have to send FLIKs through so the machine stops beeping up front. When the time comes, we will be using the battery in the MagicBand to allow for us to read RF-media from the MagicBand at a distance. It is funny because it can barely read it when you tap the Mickey to Mickey without pressing hard. It will ping the next MagicBand that enters the standby queue and the MagicBand will send a response prior to boarding a ride vehicle.
For what its worth, while I won't be able to bring these issues to the attention of someone who can do something without revealing who I am, I think you should ask for a leader if you experience this at Pirates. It shouldn't be happening if staffing is sufficient and said CM should be "merging" the lines, hence FP Merge. It happens occasionally at my attraction and it is annoying when they're not sending standby guests and we send empty cars.
I hope this helps.
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